The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)

A+
One of the 15 films listed in the category
"Religion" on the Vatican film list.
SDG

Some of the most intriguing artistic tributes
to faith and religion come from nonbelievers. A Man For All Seasons, the
great drama of the life and martyrdom of St. Thomas More, was
written for the stage and screen by the non-Christian Robert
Bolt. The story of The
Song of Bernadette, the Marian visionary of Lourdes, was
first written as a historical novel by a Jewish author, Franz
Werfel. And Mark Twain’s favorite work among all his books was
his Joan of Arc.

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/Spiritual Value

Age Appropriateness

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

Pier Paolo Pasolini was an atheist, indeed a Marxist, and his
The Gospel According to Matthew is routinely interpreted
as a proto-Marxist allegory. Yet Pasolini was perhaps first of
all a poet, and the concepts of the sacred and the divine, far
from repelling him as so much religious superstition, held for
him a powerful appeal. In 1962 he came to Assisi in response to
Pope John XXIII’s call for dialogue with non-Christian artists.
While there, he read through a book of the Gospels "from
beginning to end, like a novel," later proclaiming the story of
Jesus "the most exalting thing one can read."

As a result of this experience, Pasolini became consumed with
the notion of filming the life of Christ straight from one of the
Gospels, shooting without a screenplay and taking no editorial
license with the text. After completing The Gospel According
to Matthew, he dedicated it "to the dear happy familiar
memory of John XXIII."

Pasolini edits, but doesn’t rewrite; he omits some scenes and
rearranges others, but on a scene-by-scene basis he follows
Matthew’s dialogue almost verbatim, neither changing nor adding.
(A few very minor departures are allowed, such as putting
Matthew’s list of the names of the twelve disciples onto Jesus’
lips.)

What most differentiates Pasolini’s method from that of
subsequent word-for-word productions such as The Gospel of John is Pasolini’s
reliance on the image as the cinematic equivalent of the sacred
writer’s narration. There is no voiceover narrative in The
Gospel According to Matthew; whatever Matthew tells us
himself, as opposed to reporting other people saying, must either
be understood from the images or else be lost.

The result of this rigor is a film that is at once both more
cinematic and less literary than a film like The Gospel of
John, yet also less intrusive and more respectful of the text
than adapted works that venture to put the filmmakers’ own words
in the biblical figures’ mouths, such as “Jesus of Nazareth” or even
The Miracle Maker.

Obviously, some things are lost, starting with the
genealogical lists with which Matthew begins his Gospel. Other
incidents take on a curious pantomime quality, and can only be
fully understood in light of the Gospel text. Since Joseph and
Mary have no dialogue in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, the
actors are reduced to silence, and we must infer from her
pregnant state and their meaningfully troubled expressions what
is happening between them.

In fact, other than the angel speaking to Joseph in dreams,
the wordless silence of this sequence is broken only by
caption-like epigrams representing Matthew’s citations from the
prophets, which count as quotations rather than narrative and
amount to a sort of heavenly commentary on the gospel events.

The net effect of this sometimes unnatural silence is not,
however, a stylized or surreal quality, but a strangely
persuasive authenticity. Though Joseph and Mary never speak, they
don’t come across like actors in a silent film. Instead, they
seem like real people in a documentary that seems to have cut out
the conversations that must have occurred, as opposed to
fictionalized characters reciting a screenwriter’s glosses and
interpolations.

A cast of non-actors (local peasants, laborers, shopkeepers,
and the like) and location shooting in rural southern Italy (in
the same region where Gibson would later film The Passion of the
Christ) helps strip the production of artifice and
creates a compelling peasant authenticity in the manner of
Italian neo-realist cinema.

Enrique Irazoqui, a half Jewish, half Basque economics student
who had never acted and had no thought of acting when he met
Pasolini, plays Jesus. Irazoqui’s performance is often noted for
its urgency and revolutionary zeal, but what most stands out to
me is Irazoqui’s lack of self-consciousness and affectation. Few
Jesus films manage to avoid the pitfall of making Christ seem
artificially preoccupied with his own authority and status. In
productions from the very early 1905 silent Life and Passion of Jesus
Christ to “Jesus of Nazareth”, Christ often seems to
wear his divinity like a royal robe (or, in the case of The Last Temptation of
Christ, like a horsehair shirt).

At the opposite extreme is the casual, unassuming "buddy
Jesus" of small-screen productions like the 1999 Jesus and
the 2004 Judas, a
figure lacking in authority and gravitas. The Gospel According
to Matthew is one of the few Jesus films in which Jesus is at
once authoritative and forceful, and also unaffected and, for
lack of a better term, persuasively human. (Gibson’s The
Passion of the Christ also avoids these pitfalls, in part
because Jesus’ attention is consumed with his sufferings and his
mission, not his deity.)

Pasolini’s film mirrors Jesus’ concern for the poor, but
doesn’t exaggerate it, or reduce the Gospel to a political tract.
(Had he wished to do so, Pasolini might have found Luke’s Gospel,
with its special emphasis on the poor and powerless, more
congenial than Matthew to such a purpose. Where Matthew has
Jesus’ birth attended by the mysterious Magi, Luke’s Gospel has
humble shepherds; in Matthew we read "Blessed are the poor in
spirit," but in Luke we read simply "Blessed are you poor,"
followed by woes upon the rich.)

Needless to say, there’s none of the spectacle of a Hollywood
biblical production, and virtually no special effects. The
miraculous is depicted in a very minimalistic, matter-of-fact way
that emphasizes meaning over display, and evokes the transcendent
without stumbling over efforts to depict it directly.

Angels (including the tempter) are depicted without fanfare by
actors simply attired, and the voice from heaven that speaks at
Jesus’ baptism is merely an offscreen voice, though the camera
pulls back and the actors look to heaven. Even the walking on
water — the most effective such scene I have ever seen — is very
restrained and straightforward, and plays like a filmed event
rather than a special effect.

There are limitations to Pasolini’s approach. It would have
been difficult to attempt the Transfiguration in this low-key
method, and Pasolini doesn’t try. (Actually, nearly all
Jesus films omit the Transfiguration, a notable exception being
the 1905 Life and Passion).

But Pasolini’s method also yields remarkable successes. One of
The Gospel According to Matthew’s special achievements is
the way it finds a cinematic equivalent to the literary nature of
Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount, which
fills three chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, is widely regarded by
biblical scholars not as a single speech originally given by
Jesus on a single occasion, but as a collection of sayings and
teachings that Jesus proclaimed on various occasions, probably
repeatedly and in various forms, edited together into a single
speech by the sacred writer.

In keeping with this, Pasolini likewise edits together his
Sermon on the Mount sequence out of separate shots of Irazoqui
proclaiming Jesus’ teaching at different times and places. The
camera stays tight on Irazoqui’s face, keeping the edits
relatively unobtrusive, just as they are in Matthew’s Gospel; of
the differing circumstances or audiences that occasioned the
various components that become the Sermon on the Mount we learn
nothing in Matthew, and therefore Pasolini shows us nothing of
them. Only the cuts themselves, along with varying backgrounds
and lighting conditions, indicate that we are experiencing a
continuity created in the editing room.

The score includes some curious choices, ranging from Mozart
and Bach to blues and Billie Holiday. One could imagine The
Gospel According to Matthew with no music at all, just as
Carl Dreyer wanted The
Passion of Joan of Arc to play with no music. Yet I think
Christian film writer Seth Studer has a point when he argues in
his review of the film, "Surprisingly, the
soundtrack only adds to the film’s spiritual authenticity.
By not confining itself to one style or era, the music invokes
afresh the transcendence of Christ across the ages, across
cultures."

There are also a few visual stylized departures from the film’s generally persuasive sense of authenticity, such as the outlandish headgear worn by the Jewish leaders, which a reader helpfully points out are based on the 15th-century frescos of Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. Pasolini deliberately did no research, wanting to approach the Gospel as a story on its own terms rather than as a historical document, and costumer Danilo Donati, the same reader informs me, drew his designs from the artwork of the Italian Renaissance. (Once again one could draw a comparison to The Passion of Joan of Arc, where the otherwise historically accurate milieu was broken by a few touches of impressionistic architectural detailing.)

Some of the Jewish leaders’ hats are simply fantastical and silly-looking, but others are unmistakably reminiscent of bishops’ mitres. This has led some commentators unaware of the artistic heritage to suppose some sort of anti-ecclesiastical statement by Pasolini. In keeping with Piero’s work, the connection might legitimately be seen as an open-ended commentary on the human frailty of all human authority, even divinely appointed authority.

In spite of how he tells the story, Pasolini may well have
been sympathetic to Jewish sensitivity on this point. One reason
for the Jewish leaders’ whimsical hats, then, may have been to
suggest that the Jewish leaders in this story are not to be taken
as representative of the Jewish people.

The limitations of Pasolini’s approach become most apparent
during the understated Passion narrative — possibly the mildest
Passion ever filmed, even milder than the most kid-friendly Jesus
movies, such as The Miracle Maker or the 1905 Life and
Passion. In fact, the single least persuasive image in all of
The Gospel According to Matthew may be the sight of
Irazoqui’s hair glossy and unmussed in the center of the crown of
thorns.

Pasolini shows us Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus’ cross, but
Jesus himself shows no sign of the difficulty that would have
required Simon to do so, and walks composedly behind him. For
almost the first time in the film, it seems like play-acting
rather than reality. On the other hand, Jesus’ death itself is so
strikingly underscored, with a black screen (accompanied a
mysterious quotation from Isaiah 14), that it almost seems the
film may end there.

In the end, perhaps the most enduring achievement of The
Gospel According to Matthew is an ironic one, given
Pasolini’s Marxism: No other life-of-Christ film is so
contemplative, inviting the viewer simply to meditate on the life
and teaching of Jesus. (Only The Passion of the Christ
matches this meditative quality, but it’s a Passion play, not a
life-of-Christ film.)

In contrast to the revolutionary, action-oriented montage
cinema of pioneering Soviet filmmakers, Pasolini uses long,
unbroken shots. His method eschews interpretive mediation between
the viewer and Matthew’s text; questions of back story, narrative
explanation, or character development are all set aside, so that
the text can speak for itself. He who has ears, let him hear.

As a Catholic Christian film writer, there are few things more
gratifying to me than to hear that my writing has connected with
a reader who doesn’t share my faith. To get an email from an
atheist or agnostic expressing appreciation for a review, to know
that my work was able to reach across the divide that separates
us and communicate something meaningful, is for me among the most
rewarding aspects of my work.

The Gospel According to Matthew came about as a result
of Pasolini’s response to John XXIII’s call for renewed dialogue
between the Church and non-Christian artists. I’d like to think
that Pasolini would have been gratified that his film should
continue to speak to Christians in a meaningful way about Jesus
and the Gospel.

Product Notes

As far as I know, at this time there is no good Region 1 (North America) DVD edition of The Gospel According to St. Matthew. This seems to be the fault of the Pier Paolo Pasolini Foundation in Rome, which not only controls the prints, but forbids the use of chapter stops, on the theory that the film must be watched in one sitting. I have heard that the Region 2 (UK) DVD from Palisades Tartan may be better; it doesn't seem to be available from Amazon.com, but can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

Mail

The large hats of the Pharisees that you spend so much time speculating about in your review of Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew have a simple explanation. They are directly inspired by the way the Pharisees and members of the Sanhedrin are depicted in the frescos of the painter Piero Della Francesca. In fact, the costume designer of the film, the great Danilo Donati, based all of his costume designs for the film not on historically accurate research, but on the way this period was depicted in Italian Renaissance painting of the 1400s. If you look at the film and then study the paintings of Piero Della Francesca, Masacio, Uccello etc. you will find everything there.

For the most famous, and striking example is the huge hats of the Pharisees, please see the frescos by Piero, The Story of the True Cross, which are in Arrezzo, Tuscany, where the Pharisees wear these huge hats. But there are many more examples. Those odd, plate-like helmets that the Romans wear are also found in the Piero Della Francesca frescos. Piero didn’t know what Romans and Pharisees really looked like — so he used his imagination — and it is from Piero’s fantasy that Pasolini and Donati drew their inspiration.

Watch the film — Herod’s costume — the three wisemen — Salome’s costume — the rich man who won’t give up his wealth — all these costume designs come from Italian painting of the 1400s. All of this adds another interesting layer to the meaning of the film. Pasolini wasn’t interested in historical accuracy — but rather in the relevance of this great tale through history. I hope this helps clarify your speculation about why Pasolini chose to use those huge hats!